International Incident
“My goodness, there must be nearly seventy of them up in the air.” The wingman remarked as she eased her Bobcat lower in the formation.
“True enough. They’re flying CAP, just like us.” The leader observed. Their flight of four XF-35 Bobcats was cruising at twenty three thousand feet, two hundred miles off the coast of Riechland and safely in SENSE territorial waters. The planes were flying “lights out”, without their radar and relying on eint and an AWACS bird fifty miles behind another ten thousand feet up. Their Electronic Warning System had been extremely active for the past half hour, warning the pilots of the radiated energy of hundreds of Reichland ground and airborne search radars that were sweeping the area, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
Not that they would have must luck in finding them anyway, the pilot noted. The XF-35 was smoothly contoured and built with stealth in mind, with the form of every surface and system considered to give the Bobcat as small as possible a radar signature as possible. The idea was, that the Bobcat did not exist to the enemy at all… until it wanted to make its presence known, that is. Microwave radiation from the Reichland radars pounded the sleek fighters relentlessly, and was deflected off on harmless vectors or was absorbed through the complex dielectric composite “smart” skin as was converted into electricity, ironically, to add to the charge of the Bobcat’s batteries.
The Reichland forces had some “stealthy” or “low-observable” aircraft as well, such as the F-22 raptor or the JSF ripoffs of which designs they copied and build in their countries, poor parodies of the original. But the Xing Shianans are still very far ahead of the Reichens in such warfare, and their “stealth” aircraft were found almost as easily.
“We’ve got five bogeys headed your way.” The AWACS operator told the Bobcats, “They must have detected something from us.”
The wing leader was not surprised, the Reichens were extremely nervous and would investigate anything even slightly ambiguous or analogous on their radars. They were still quite far away in terms of ability to pick out the “lights out” Bobcats, but they would have probably picked up some strange and faint readings on from the AWACS LPI radar and had gone in to investigate.
Unfortunately they were moving out of Reichen airspace, at least in the eyes of SENSE. Since the first Prussian-SENSE war, SENSE had maintained that Reichland would not be able to fly any aircraft beyond its borders, anything beyond considered SENSE international airspace. However Reichland had never accepted that restriction and claimed that all areas within 200 miles of its borders would be its airspace. It was an issue that was sidelined and never gotten around to much conclusion, being left on the political backburner following the recent governmental changes in the Germanic states and resulting militarism. Though neither side suspected it, this issue would have to be decided by force. Now the five Reichen aircraft, a flight of Su-30 high performance fighters were well within SENSE-defined airspace and on a rapid vector of the AWACS aircraft. But they were still technically not enemies.
“Okay, I’ll hail them.” The wing leader said. “Rest of you stay dark.” He set all his weapons controls on except for the master arm, the weapons one step short of being ready to shoot. In anticipation of the possibility of air to air combat maneuvering, the computer moved the advanced ejection seat to a more crouch like position to allow better tolerance of the “gees”. Lastly, he selected the controls to turn on his radar reflectors which made him appear on the Reichen radars. They could detect him now. The rest of the Bobcats opened up the formation to allow flexibility in case of trouble and the two sides blasted towards each other with a combined closing speed of six hundred knots.
“This is the 25th Black Raptors of the XSS Holtz, Reichen aircraft, you are within SENSE international airspace, advice you reverse your heading immediately.” The Bobcat pilot called out on a general hailing circuit. There was silence.
“Repeat, Reichen aircraft, reverse heading immediately, over.” The pilot radioed. There was more silence, then a burst of static over the radio.
“It is our airspace you are in, SENSE scum!” The unfamiliar voice came in over the radio just as the EWS squawked a series of electronic tones warning that the Su-30s had locked their radars onto him. Another series of squawks warned him that there had been multiple AA-12 Adders launched and headed his way.
“Crap!” The pilot turned the radar reflectors off, triggered the master arm and LPI radar, and punched his plane into a vertical climb on full power while the computer automatically dumped radar reflecting chaff in his wake, attempted to blind and jam the AA-12s, and dumped noisemaker decoy that mimicked the radar and infrared signatures of the Bobcat, except much brighter and obvious.
At the same time the Su-30 pilots cursed as the Bobcat disappeared from their scopes, their missiles spearing into a confusing radar picture of jamming and countermeasures. The Adders all went wild, spearing through the Bobcat positions and beyond without hitting anything. Communicating frantically, they punched their burners to close to the last location of the Bobcat, hoping to get a shot with an Infrared missile or the cannon.
But the Xing Shianan Bobcats were already far ahead of the battle phase loop, two wingmen who had now moved to a good flanking position easily targeted the approaching fighters with their LPI radars and loosed three AMRAAM Bs at the incoming Reichens, the enemy detecting them only in the brief moment they opened their bay doors to release their weapons. It was too late. The targeted Reichens barely had time to react before the missiles slammed into them and blotted their planes out in the night sky in a spectacle of burning munitions and jet fuel as they plunged downwards with the grace of a broken leaf. Three down, two chutes.
Seeing the rapid destruction of their three wing mates, the remaining two Reichens decided they must have come up against a force of overwhelming numbers of undetectable Xing Shianan aircraft approaching on they raid. They turned tail and ran for their borders at full speed, screaming desperately for reinforcements and warning of an impending raid. The Bobcats smashed them both out of the sky with AIM-120 Bs where they ran. No chutes this time.
But it was not over, several flights of Reichen fighter aircraft had been now scrambled to fend off the supposed air raid while their entire nation was gripped in panic. They approached, then entered SENSE airspace on full power, charging into the dark night and hoping to get visual on the SENSE stealth aircraft so that they can engage manually. The four Bobcats exhausted their load of AIM-120s on them, and turned for home on super cruise, too fast for the Reichens, now less five more aircraft and low on fuel to pursue- not that they could detect them anyway.
The Bobcats returned to the XSS Holtz in the Sea of Fuchs twenty minutes later, having scored ten kills for no loss. The Reichen pilots never knew what they were fighting, nor from where the attackers had come, for both planes and ships could not be found on their sensors, but they knew such amazing abilities to stay hidden and punch hard could only be the work of Xing Shianan crew and technology.
Now in the midst of heightened tensions, there was an international incident to throw into an already volatile mix.